What makes a life
by Inkfire
Summary: Sara Kingdom runs from shadows, or to them—she cannot quite tell. All she wants is to do the right thing, if only she could. Character insight piece from the classic series, set during The Daleks' Master Plan.


**Another classic!Who drabble, this time on the lovely Sara Kingdom from Daleks' Master Plan. Please note that my interpretation of the character is based solely on the aforementioned episode, and that I have no knowledge in other Who-related material in which she may have appeared, books, audios and the like. Enjoy!**

* * *

It is somewhat of a scattered life, random and odd, dropping them on one corner or another of the universe. She can hear herself laughing at times, and the sound almost startles her. Because Mavic Chen is after them, and the Daleks, and they know they must find a way, find a way—the weight of so many lives is sitting on her shoulders. And yet they fall in England at Christmas time, or on a movie set, and for a short while she _forgets_. Forgets what this is all about; forgets her name is Sara Kingdom and she bears responsibility, a duty—

(_SSS agent. Murderer of her own brother_.)

—she can't be sure to whom. She knows, however, that she must fight and protect, make a difference. She knows that she has a mission to fulfill, even when life seems strange and wonderful, with the Daleks just far enough behind and Steven being stupidly argumentative and the Doctor smiling and humming to himself in that impossibly mysterious way of his, old and young and genius. They stride out of the TARDIS like born wanderers, ready for new worlds; those men, they teach her to trust in something that is not the authority. Sometimes she wonders what they're thinking—wonders if they are scared…

She is scared sometimes, scared of the next unpredictable destination, scared of never finding what to do with the taranium core, scared of failing and jeopardizing the whole universe. And sometimes the shadow of David is there, tracking her every move. _Why didn't you trust me? _he says. _You trust the Doctor now. Why couldn't you see, before, that everything was wrong? _And she wishes she could weep, and bring him back; she wishes she had listened. She hasn't, she couldn't. She was a girl of steel, back then, still now; loyalty and obedience were the only things she understood—

Every night, her brother falls, Chen has the taranium core and she is ripped from the Doctor's side, she can hear Steven screaming; they are to die, the only men she's ever believed in, but she is denied that mercy. Every night is an eternity of captivity, knowing that the universe is enslaved and it is her fault (_partly, but there is no small responsibility_). And during the day, she runs. She laughs, she thinks, she lives. She follows the Doctor, and she can hold on to the hope that somehow, they will make it. Defeat the Daleks. Save the world.

She won't leave the Doctor's side, and that is what seals her fate. It comes like a wave of vertigo, like the sky is swirling suddenly around her. Shadows dance in a mad carousel, a cloud over her head; she crumbles to the ground. The Doctor falls at her side.

It is destruction she is experiencing, and this means their mission fulfilled, only she is caught in the wave with no escape in sight. In a few excruciating minutes, her eternity unfolds, her body bends under the weight of responsibility. They have, maybe, maybe, won their fight. Sara kneels and tastes dust in the annihilation of the menace, and all the things surrounding it—tastes the many deaths they haven't prevented. Her brother is there in the obscurity that descends over her eyes. Her brother, dead too young and come to claim her.

Sara lives forever in a few seconds of pain, knowing what it is to survive, and to ache, and to crawl desperately forward, until eventually, she will die. Knowing the unnerving mix of it all and the leaking of the life force that drains from her every paper-light, yet terrifyingly heavy limb. She doesn't get to close her eyes to rest. She doesn't get to hear a soothing voice again.

In the end, Sara Kingdom goes to bones and dust, and the burden is lifted as her substance falls apart, to be blown in the hissing wind.

The Doctor lives. The universe is freed. Every day, soldiers fall.


End file.
